You probably thought you'd never miss the found-footage gimmick, but at least The Last Exorcism (2010) did a few interesting things within the genre tropes, including a twist ending that added evil cult doings, along with some kind of demonic birth in the woods. Ed Gass-Donnelly's follow-up is the afterbirth, and it's one hell of a mess. Now that the shaky-cam nonsense has been left behind, what remains are textureless, overlit, sub-TV-quality visuals that only accentuate the fact that our protagonist, Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell), is at least a decade older than the 17-year-old exorcised sect-escapee that she's playing. Frank (Muse Watson), the head of the halfway house where she's reintegrating into society, tells her, "I don't believe in demons, but I do believe in evil. It's done by people." Yes, people like Gass-Donnelly and his co-writer, Damien Chazelle. Wait — the talented Harvard grad behind Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench? Now that is evil!
